On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 2:37 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss < [email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > Some of us run Virtualbox and/or Proxmox. I have both installed. I've > realized there is another option. That is creating a virtual LAMP > server. > > All three are for different use cases IMO. Looks like you want to run a bunch of websites running different applications, 24x7 within your SOHO network In your shoes, I would go with Proxmox. Define a template (OS image) with PHP-FM baked in. And use it for deploying VMs for different application websites. LXC is also an option if you want to go the container route. Proxmox supports both VMs and LXC containers. There are several YouTube vlogs on how to go about it. Before the advent of SaaS proliferation, I used to deploy such application "appliances" for small businesses. Each appliance had a single application. When things went south with an application, I didn't have to bring down the entire infra stack. For the backend database (MySQL), I used a single MySQL server, for all the web applications; mainly because of backing up application data. Yes, it could potentially be a single point of failure but you weigh the pros/cons and decide for your use case. In the old days I used old hardware to create a LAMP web server locally > using CentOS, and Samba. Samba allowed me to edit in real time or > remotely. CentOS made it easy to create virtual hosts. > I hope you are using Samba on your internal LAN only. Even so, please be aware that it could be susceptible to lateral attacks by malware from other devices in your local LAN. > Things have changed. It is not as easy as it used to be. I am now > using Ubuntu and to configure an Apache virtual host requires PHP-FPM. > The config is a pain. > > Unless you are doing high volume activity on your "local" websites, you can continue with the old fashioned PHP setup. Or you can spend the time to create an OS image (VM) or a LXC container with PHP-FPM and replicate that for your web sites. Yesterday I started to work with ChatGPT to develop a LAMP server with a > control panel. I'm going to guess it will be a 2 or 3 day project. > > I'm using an old i5/4cores/4threads/16G RAM, and a 1T SSD. This will be > for development and testing. There is no need for a mail server or DNS. > I will use the hosts files as DNS. > > Don't see any problem with the above if you are deploying everything in one machine via Virtual Host. But with VMs/Containers - beware you will have to maintain a "gold" file somewhere and deploy it to all the instances when you make any change. I suggest you deploy a small instance for DNS and DHCP services with 'dnsmasq'; it is well documented and not too hard to set up. That way you control the networking parameters from a central place. It's not too hard. To test outbound SMTP mail, there are several SMTP relay services with a free tier. But you need to have an external DNS server. Your Domain Registrar probably does DNS for free. Just check them out. When I have complete the config, I will make a YouTube video and I will > also make a blog post. > > Awesome, Good luck and please share the links > Any thoughts are much appreciated. > You are welcome. Hope this helps. -- Arun Khan
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